Shandra does some grammar stuff

Sunday, October 21, 2012

This is from a research paper I wrote
for English 302 in the spring. It was for the linguistics unit of the
class, and I opted to write about John Searle's classification of
speech acts, and how they are used in online spaces. Passive
voice/transitive verbs will be bolded and in green,
abstract subjects will be bolded and in blue,
and linking verbs will be bolded and in red.
I've decided not to include the introduction in this excerpt, because
I feel that the actual “meat” of the paper (if you will) is more
overblown and lardy. (Also, even though it was not one of the
requirements, I will be highlighting prepositional phrases in
yellow.)
(Another side note: apologies for the formatting being a total mess,
I had to re-download this from Google because I lost the original,
and this is what I got.)

_____

The
main question that was to be answered
in this paper wasthe question
of which speech acts

in
particular are used to respond to inflammatory posts or comments in
an online setting. My theory

uses
John Searle's classification of speech acts, wherein he states that
thereare
five different

To
find my data, I exclusively observed online sources, as
they were
more than appropriate for

the
kind of
information I was
trying to glean. I had initially intended to
find my information through

blogs
that areof a
feminist/womanist bent, but discovered that the vast majority of
well-

known,
“mainstream” feminist blogs have a policy of
deleting any trolling or off-topic arguments in
the

comments.
This made it relatively hard to
find data on
these sites, as
the majority of
the speech

examined
fell under
their description of
trolling, even if it may not have been
considered trolling in

other
forums. For this reason,
I then narrowed my horizons to
Reddit, where comments and posts in

the
“subreddits” are
stated to be
similarly moderated, but in
reality, are
not. I then further narrowed my

sample
area to
one post on
Reddit in
the “r/MensRights” group that
received over 1,500 comments

from
MRAs, feminists, anti-feminists, and many participants who
represented various other groups.

(Worth
noting is that the original poster identifies as atheist, so atheists
were significantly represented

in the
group, though this had no bearing on the arguments or speech acts
used.)

___

Rewrite:
In this paper, the main question I strove to answer was: Which speech
acts are found in responses to inflammatory online materials? To
answer this, I used John Searle's classification of speech acts,
which includes five illocutionary speech acts: assertives;
directives; commissives; expressives; and declarations (Searle 1975).
I figured that assertives would appear most often, as they "commit
a speaker to the truth of an expressed proposition” (Searle 1975).
In feminist settings, especially when "men's rights"
activists are significantly present, gender is obviously the main
distinction between the sparring parties. Age and social standing do
not appear to matter, possibly because this information is not
necessarily publicly shown. This correlates with the anonymity
provided by the internet. Also, research suggests the vulnerability
of feminist forums, who "must balance inclusive ideals against
the need for protection and safety, a tension that can be exploited
by disruptive elements to generate intragroup conflict” (Herring et
al. 2011).

For
this data, I only observed online sources. I had wanted to find the
data on feminist blogs, but the majority of "mainstream"
ones generally delete off-topic arguments or "trolling" in
the comments. Because of this, I could not find sufficient data on
these sites, and moved my sights to Reddit, where comments/posts on
"subreddits" are frequently unmoderated. Finally, I
narrowed my sample area to a post with over 1,500 comments from many
participants who represented many groups.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

I had a little bit of trouble
identifying the active and passive voice; I marked [av] every
verb that sounded even remotely active without giving any thought to
which ones were transitive verbs, and which ones were simply linking.
I was told [pv] that I needed more to go on from my journal
page, so hopefully I will do okay.

I am still really interested in the
brush strokes, yet I can't seem to find a lot of evidence of them
having been used in my earlier papers. I think I am wary of
over-expressing myself in academic papers, and reluctant to let them
sound florid, but perhaps using the brush strokes will make my papers
even better. The problem, strange and daunting,
still looms. I do not want to make my
papers sound too over-done or over-thought, as my grades have been
lowered for doing such things in the past. Changing
my style completely to get better grades, I realize there are
tasteful ways to incorporate more drama into academic writing. I
have been quite leery for some time of making it sound like I have
nothing to say and am padding my paper with obnoxious fluff in order
to hit some kind of limit.

I mean, I can say
something like, “The paper, a scroll
of nothingness that filled up the table, stopped being meaningful
long before its end.” However, that
seems unbelievably out of place, and like I'm just trying to use the
most lurid language I possibly can in order to either make myself
sound smarter, or fill a page. Mind
racing, hands flying over the keys, I desperately try to find a
balance between ridiculous and supplementary. I
like that one a little better, but it still seems strange and a
little forced. I guess practice makes perfect in an instance like
this. It's up to me to strike the balance in my own writing.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

I'm really interested in the “brush
strokes” that we learned about earlier in the week. I am always
looking for ways to make my writing more descriptive without making
it florid, and I think that these are really useful tools to have,
especially if we want to write creatively in the future. I think that
I've been doing these things without really realizing it for some
time, but it's nice to have them in my repertoire now.

For example, for me, finding the fine
line between fleshing out your characters' descriptions and overdoing
it can be difficult. I have read stories that tell us everything
about the way a character looks, right down to what brand of mascara
she is wearing, or what color the stripes on his Adidas are, and,
conversely, I have read stories that leave me wondering if the
character described even has any physical characteristics whatsoever.
(That sentence is a little overlong. I'm still learning.)

One of the things I really like about
the “brush strokes” is that they give you a lot of different ways
to say the same thing, which is something I always appreciate. For
example, with a little tweaking, you basically have infinite ways to
say something as simple as, “The blonde girl cried.”

“Painting with participles”:
Hugging herself to protect from the cold, the blonde girl wept
bitterly in the cold.

“Painting with absolutes”: Body
shaking, eyes streaming, the blonde girl cried like her life depended
on the tears.

“Painting with appositives”: The girl, a pale ghost with
even lighter hair, sobbed without respite for hours.

“Painting with adjectives out of order”: The girl, pale and
hunched, wept silently.

I realize that outright providing examples like that rather than
trying to incorporate them them into the actual blog post is kind of
going for the low-hanging fruit, as it were, but I wanted to do it
like this because I wanted to use examples that are more creative
than technical, if that makes sense. With that said, I look forward
to working more on these in the future, because I think they will be
quite helpful (especially in that “one chapter” assignment a few
of us are working on for English 325 – of course, I can't speak to
these techniques' helpfulness for other people, but hey).

Saturday, September 29, 2012

At this particular point, I
do not have a “paper” due for another class, per se, but I am
taking English 325 (Young Adult Literature), and our final assignment
is to write the first chapter of our own young adult novel. I have
been told to over-analyze my own writing less and free write more,
since I'm road-blocking myself, so I suppose I'll kill two
birds with one stone and do some free-writing here.

I didn't ask to be the leader of our group. I never laid in bed at
night praying to some faceless force in the universe, a great
reckoner of high school fortune, to make me suddenly important.
I was about as invested in that as I was in extracurricular
activities (I wasn't). That said, I sure as hell never complained
about it, either. I've always had kind of a thing for power (not
that having two other nerds kowtow to me and one girl constantly try
to one-up me really constitutes “power,” I suppose, but hey –
we're in high school.) And, at any rate, power is only
convenient when it's convenient—your friends don't want to
see the new kung-fu movie, but you do? Well, they're going
now. Unfortunately, stuff like that is the only benefit to this kind
of social set-up: stupid petty stuff that doesn't matter are
the things on which people are the most likely to defer to you.

I'm not making myself sound exactly likable, am I? I don't care. I
tried for likable. I tried for likable for sixteen years. It went
nowhere. No, I didn't get dumped, “friend-zoned,” or locked
away in some metaphorical ivory tower to pine for my beloved.
Nothing like that happened, which I suppose makes this
unlike every other story in the universe.
No, you know what happened? She died. That's what happened. So you'll
have to excuse me if I don't feel like being particularly “likable”
at the moment, because there isn't exactly anything to like.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

It came as news to me that one is not
supposed to ever put a comma after “although”. I just created a
split infinitive there, but I'm going to go ahead and leave it, since
this is supposed to be a learning experience.

I am definitely learning a lot about
punctuation. I think that I tend to over-comma (is that a compound
verb?) (is that even a thing?) because I am afraid of my sentences
sounding like they're running on and on and going out of control kind
of like this one is but then again this is a bad sentence for a
variety of reasons so I suppose I should end it now. On the other
hand, when I use commas excessively, as I tend to do, I end up
pausing my writing so much that it sounds as if it could be read by
William Shatner.

It is interesting to learn that I do
not have the handle on things that I thought I did, as I have
considered myself a champion of grammar for a long time now.
I realize that this sounds conceited, but (at the
risk of sounding like I'm passing the buck) it can be easy to feel
that way when you spend more than five minutes a day on the Internet
and see what passes for decent in that realm (i.e., “at least”
being considered one word).
At any rate, it is interesting to learn so many new things that I can
tuck away into the recesses of my mind, until
such a date that I will be able to share my newfound grammatical
knowledge and truly get a handle on it.

However,
these things take a lot of practice. I read once (like, four years
ago) that using the word “lots” was not technically grammatically
correct, and I still have to actively work to
keep it out of my speaking and writing.
These are not the kinds of things for which one can just make flash
cards, nor can you truly effectively use things
like worksheets or memory drills.
I feel that, at least for myself, I must learn these things
organically, or they will never really take root
in my head.
For instance, I have been attempting to use absolutely no
parenthetical thoughts or dashes in my writing these last few weeks,
yet today I decided I would allow them to creep
back in, and they have, once again, taken over.
As it turns out, anyway, I have found new ways to interrupt myself,
like the overuse of commas that seems to be the hallmark of this
particular blog entry. The sentence either sounds like it's getting
away from me, or it sounds as if I need to take a breath every other
word, so what am I to do?
I could use the Internet for information, but it
isn't necessarily reliable.
I could read Nitty-Gritty
Grammar
from cover to cover, for
I believe that would be the source.
I suppose all I can do is keep working at it!

Sunday, September 16, 2012

I've been enjoying getting into more
advanced concepts, such as syntax. Although, I will admit, I took a
linguistics class last fall and, between you (all) and me,
I did very poorly, so I am hoping that I can pull myself through this
unit a little better and improve my track record.

I
have always considered my grammar to be very good, though not
impeccable, and I have wanted to work on making it as close to
perfect as possible for some time. I don't want to be the person who
slips up on “lay”/”lie” or says “you and I” when I mean
“you and me,” so I am looking forward to learning even more about
things like intransitive verbs and other related concepts so that I
can always know that I am using the right form. As an English major,
I find that people frequently look for opportunities to nitpick and
correct my grammar, which would not bother me if said people did not
seem so self-congratulatory, as they frequently do in such instances.
Generally, I like to respond to such people with a joke I once heard:
“I'm an English major, not a speakin' major.” That said, I would
like to be able to refine both my spoken and written grammar to the
point where such things no longer occur.

To
that end, I have largely been working on interrupting myself less in
my writing. In my first blog post, I made note of my overuse of
dashes and parenthetical thoughts. I have been actively attempting
not to use them at all for now; after I get used to writing without
them, and saying what I need to say in more of a straight flow of
ideas rather than constantly interrupting myself, I will attempt to
work up to using them sparingly. That said, it is a little tricky to
get used to the way my writing sounds in my head without them. It
sounds somewhat clipped and abrupt, though I suppose that, as I
become more accustomed to not using them, it will start to sound more
natural. I've also been working on really paring down and dividing
sentences where necessary to avoid the dreaded run-on. I mean, I got
through this whole post without one parenthesis or dash appearing, so
I think I would call that progress.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

For me, a semester really has to get
into full swing before I feel like I'm “learning” anything. For
the first month or so, I'm always caught in this bizarre transition
period where I'm caught between summer and school. I'm thinking, “I
have to read this article and write 500 words and also finish Beowulf
and read the Bible and I'm already thinking about finals?! Two weeks
ago, I was at the zoo!” There is, of course, a chance that I am
making it harder on myself than it really needs to be.

However,
despite my nostalgia for that day at the zoo, and my lingering summer
(mental) fog, I am learning things. (I'm kind of making it sound like
I'm learning against my will.) For instance, I was fascinated the
other day to hear that long sentences are not necessarily a bad thing
in writing, so long as they contribute to sentence variety. One of
the issues I see in my own writing (and this could just be me) is
that I do not really have enough sentence variety. My sentences are
long, my paragraphs are long, my papers are long. I suppose that no
one has ever really complained about it, but it's something I am
trying to work on nonetheless. As
a high school student, my stuff was too long; as a college student,
it's way too long. I
can only imagine what will happen when I get into grad school.

In
another vein, I also appreciate how much we emphasize ways to work
around having to use worksheets and drills with students. I would
like to implement these practices on my future classroom, since I
have yet to meet someone who was helped by worksheets. For example, I
tutored a young girl last year whose
teacher's biggest learning aids were worksheets. I helped her work
through these, and she learned basically nothing from them.
Unfortunately, the organization for which I was working also relied
heavily on worksheets, which I felt was indicative of their lack of
creativity. For the most part, the worksheets were not even theirs;
they had been pulled from workbooks and off of the internet.

I
look forward to moving further into theoretical and more complex
concepts later in the semester; for example, the work we're going to
be doing in October looks to be quite interesting, particularly
because I am not terribly well-versed in things like noun absolutes.
I also look forward to continuing to learn things I can bring to my
future classroom, though I do hope that, as I intend to teach high
school, students will know how to correctly use apostrophes by then.
I suppose if they don't, then I will have a whole arsenal of things
with which to teach them. I also plan to continue with my original
goals of not interrupting myself so much in writing. For instance: I
was going to previously put a dash after the word “writing” and
start talking about the excessive amount of parentheses in this post,
but I stopped myself!